Transphobia leads to suicide -- end of story

Since January of this year, a transgender person was murdered somewhere around the globe every 29 hours. Additionally, trans people are statistically at a much greater risk to commit suicide; the rate of suicide in the general population is under 10%, yet within the trans community it is over 40%. Dr. Alex Abramovich, from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, says, "Transphobia leads to suicide. End of story."

Global's 16x9, an investigative newsmagazine television program, aired a poignant piece that is a must watch for everyone--regardless of your thoughts on trans rights. It's available to stream on YouTube. The video highlights some of the many examples in which trans people are demonized, oppressed, and attacked on a daily basis. These attacks are not always quite so overt. 

This way through this crisis is common sense, love, and understanding. "If you go through life and people are continually using the wrong name or the wrong pronoun to refer to you, you start to question your mind. You start to question your own mental health. You start to eventually believe that you aren't real and maybe you shouldn't exist." Dr. Abramovich continues, "When people can't figure you out, they get angry. They're afraid. They get aggressive." Read more via HuffingtonPost 

Kenya: After anti-gay sermons, anti-gay rape and arson

Four men attacked a gay street vendor, raped him, and set his home on fire in West Kenya.

Erik Wasike, 28, an openly gay hawker of vests, socks, sweets and soft drinks, was abducted by the four unidentified men in Bungoma town in west Kenya.The men set Wasike’s house ablaze, destroying it and his furniture. They tied him up and left him unconscious in Lwakhakha village, he said. 

After the rape he was hospitalized for two weeks and needed corrective surgery at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu.

Wasike said his attackers accused him of spreading “the gay gospel” and luring many people into a “demonic denomination.” About three months ago, many Bungoma clergymen launched a preaching campaign against homosexuality, terming it un-Christian, satanic and un-African. Read more via 76 Crimes 

Sweden: Teenagers 'murdered gay man before wrapping snake around his neck and dressing him in women's clothes'

Two teenagers have been accused of murder after allegedly launching a brutal assault on a gay man which was filmed on a mobile phone. The pair of Moroccan refugees, aged 16 and 19, had travelled from their home country to Sweden. They followed a gay man back to his home in Bergsjön after he offered them clothes and food upon hearing they were in need. However after arriving at the apartment the two refugees allegedly beat him to death, police claim. Read more via Mirror

 

Turkey: Gays seeking military exemption no longer need to provide visual proof of their homosexuality

Turkey makes it difficult for potential conscriptees to avoid the draft, generally making exceptions only for those who are sick, disabled or homosexual. To receive an exemption based on their sexuality, men must publicly declare they are gay — a declaration that ensures discrimination will follow them for the rest of their lives. It's either that, or they must successfully hide their gay identity for a year.

As if that isn't bad enough, until last week, to receive the exemption men also had to prove their homosexuality by undergoing nude examinations and submitting photos of themselves engaged in homosexual intercourse.

Last week, however, the military silently amended the most controversial provisions in the regulation. Doctors will now merely observe the behaviors homosexuals display and the verbal declarations they make. In other words, a homosexual can choose to disclose or not to disclose his identity. If he does, this declaration will constitute the sole basis for the doctor's decision. The change represents a major step toward aligning Turkey's military with the norms for basic human rights. 

Pakistan: Officially recognized but publicly shamed

One Friday night earlier this year, a nervous but meticulously made-up crowd of transgender women sat in the upper circle of the smart Al Hamra Arts complex in Lahore, Pakistan. Bored with waiting for the performance to begin, one and then all of them stood up to take in a better view of the surroundings. The rest of the audience gawked at the sight before them: Pakistani transgender women are ordinarily found dancing at tawdry wedding parties or turning tricks. Certainly never as patrons at an upscale theatre.

That night, however, they were to be centre stage, performing "Theesri Dhun" ("Third Tune"), a rare and unique dramatization of real-life transgender stories. With harrowing tales of rape, police brutality and social stigma, it made for sombre viewing.

It also shed a light on Pakistan's complicated and disturbing LGBT rights landscape, where trans people technically enjoy better rights than in many places around the world, but in practice face violence and stigma. Even so, they are worlds ahead of Pakistani gay men, who are outlawed, brutalized and even murdered with no recourse to protection. 

While trans women are the success story amongst LGBT Pakistanis, their counterparts, transgender men — people born biologically female but who identify as male — barely register on the national conscience. Technically they should also be able to register as third gender but none has ever attempted it. Read more via Vice News

China: Transgender people forced to hide behind their secrets

At home her son still calls her daddy, at work she dresses in a masculine style, but this Chinese person has a “little secret” — she was born male, but is not any more. She had long identified as a woman, and suffered from depression after starting a family, opting in the end to have a surgical sex change.

“I had wanted to kill myself, but then I decided I should do something — if I die, I’d rather die on the operating table,” she added. Chinese society remains deeply traditional in many respects so in public she still has to hide her new identity and does not want her name or occupation revealed, for fear of any negative consequences. Now she tries to help others in her position, running an online network from her home to connect transgender individuals with each other and professionals such as doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers — who can help with divorces.

Sexually ambiguous characters have a long history in Chinese art and literature, but being transgender is still classified as a mental illness in the country —homosexuality was removed from the category in 2001 —although sex reassignment surgery is legal.

Transgender issues were given unusual prominence in China last year when the country’s most famous sexologist, Li Yinhe, announced she had been living for 17 years with a partner who was born female but identifies as a man, referring to him as her “husband” and stressing she sees herself as heterosexual. Read more via Japan Times 

Nigeria: Gay people face beatings, harsh prison sentences, even death

Nigeria made same-sex marriage and gay rights activism illegal last January. Since then, gay Nigerians say abuse and extortion have become commonplace by state-sponsored vigilantes, police and public mobs. As part of a week-long series "Nigeria: Pain and Promise," special correspondent Nick Schifrin reports on the threats and violence that LGBT citizens face in that country. Watch the report 

Iraq: 2 blindfolded men thrown off a roof in Fallujah for being gay

The Islamic State (Isis) terrorists have released a new photo report from the Iraqi city of Fallujah, showing the execution of two men, "punished" for being homosexuals. The photo report released on social media on Monday by Isis supporters shows two blindfolded men being thrown off a roof in Fallujah on charges of "sodomy."

The images shows an Isis Sharia judge reading out their crimes before a crowd of onlookers while the two gay men stand on the roof of a high-rise. After the reading out of the verdict, the Isis fighters throw down the two men, one by one as the crowd looks on in horror. Read more via International Business Times (disturbing images) 

A Dutch ISIS Fighter Takes Questions on Tumblr

Usually, by the time the public learns the names and biographies of Islamic State militants, or radicals from other groups who attack civilians, they are already dead, and so unable to speak for themselves, except occasionally in the ritualized form of martyrdom videos or manifestoes posted online. This week, however, a Dutch citizen who says he is fighting on behalf of the Islamic State in Syria, and who documents his life in the self-proclaimed caliphate on Tumblr, has been taking questions from readers.

Israfil Yilmaz, who is of Turkish descent and who abandoned a career in the Royal Netherlands Army in 2013 to join Islamist rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, has turned to Tumblr since his accounts on Instagram, Ask.fm and Twitter were suspended.

The exchanges reveal that the former soldier is well aware of his notoriety back home in the Netherlands. Asked his age recently, he referred his questioner to the Dutch government’s list of banned terrorists, to which his full name and details of his birth — Salih Yahya Gazali Yilmaz, born on Sept. 29, 1987, in Brunei — had been added just the week before. 

Read more via New York Times
 

Armenia: Support and protect human rights defenders

Armenian NGO PINK is being threatened and intimidated for its work on LGBT issues by sections of the public and by some political figures in Armenia. The Armenian authorities must stop this intimidation and hold those responsible to account. Human Rights House Network calls on the authorities to end their silence and inaction, and meet their obligations to protect, empower, and support human rights defenders.

In a joint letter to the Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, 37 NGOs from nine Human Rights Houses have detailed instances of threats and intimidation against PINK, and raised concerns about the silence and inaction by the authorities. Armenia must counter the immediate and specific threats to PINK, and work to end the wider, long-term threat to all human rights defenders in Armenia, and prevent a climate of impunity created by silence and inaction against those who threaten and intimidate human rights defenders. 

HRHN wrote a letter of concern to the Armenian authorities in September 2013, condemning ongoing smear campaigns against organisations working on gender issues, and urging the authorities to protect human rights defenders.  Read more via Human Rights House 

US: LGBT activists rally outside Dallas police HQ after another attack

Dozens of LGBT activists gathered outside Dallas Police headquarters last night to protest what they see as slow police response to the wave of crime in the Oak Lawn neighborhood, which has a prominent gay entertainment district. The protest follows another violent attack last week; the 12th in less than three months. 

Protesters carried signs that read “We Shall Rise Up” and “Justice Will Prevail.” Some waved gay pride flags, while others joined hands in silent grief for the dozen gay men who’ve been assaulted in Oak Lawn since September.

The latest victim, Geoffrey Hubbard, was beaten and robbed after leaving work. He rolled underneath a car for safety, until an off-duty officer found him. The next day, Dallas police stepped up patrols in the neighborhood. Though protesters, like Daniel Scott Cates, said the response came too late.

“It has taken two and half months of terror; it has taken blood literally running in the streets for DPD to make a visible, swift action as they did this last weekend. It’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said. Read more via KERA news 

US: The cruel HIV stalking of Charlie Sheen takes us back to the ignorant 1980s

Charlie Sheen has officially come out as HIV positive. He was forced to do so in the wake of shrill tabloid reporting that harkened back to the worst HIV-related ignorance and bullying of the 1980s.

It feels like the 1980s, because of the nature of the speculation, which is purely prurient about Sheen basically being a man-slut, and how many people he has infected with HIV—and how knowingly has he done so, without disclosing his status to them. Suddenly, in my mind, Sheen seems like the kind of hunted man Rock Hudson became, as cameras followed him being shuttled on and off planes as he became sicker and sicker. The media likes nothing more than an ailing star—even better if HIV and AIDS means the story gets front-loaded with all kinds of judgment about their “lifestyle,” sexual and otherwise.

This obviously takes it as a given that Sheen’s right to privacy has been thoroughly trampled, and that this is somehow acceptable: He has been smoked out of the closet. The Enquirer, seeing their scoop slip through their fingers, has a feverish front page, the result of much investigation, which promises to expose the “Ex-Lovers’ Horror—Did He Infect Them?” Plus: “He’s Slept With Thousands of Women—And Men!”

The headline is a throwback too—to conflating HIV, a virus, and AIDS, the disease that it can lead to, although much less frequently today than it did back then because of advances in HIV drug treatment, which Sheen himself has reportedly started. Read more via The Daily Beast